General Recommendations

• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to attract larger student numbers. [CL-3]
• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to bundle scarce teaching competencies. [CL-4]
• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to develop innovative pedagogical resources. [CL-5]
• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to promote mobility through international recognition of credits and commonly agreed degree requirements. [CL-6]
• Old barriers between the humanities and science/engineering must be lowered. [CL-8]
• Links between education and research need to be strengthened. [CL-11]
• Lifelong learning needs to take place. [CL-12]
• The summer schools and courses organized by ELSNET, FOLLI and others need to continue. [CL-13]
• The involvement of learned societies like the EACL in educational matters through international special interest groups should be fostered. [CL-14]
• Teaching staff should be increased and freed to participate in coordinated activities that enhance the students' learning experiences and the value of their qualifications. [CL-19]
• We recommend more intensive exchange of scholarly resources and techniques between industry and academia. [NEL04]
• We recommend that industry and academia stimulate the exchange of scholars and industrial researchers. [NEL05]
• We recommend that academia take industrial needs of recruitment into account (with consequences for curricula, job profiles and life-long learning). [NEL07]
• We recommend the definition of agreed standards of cooperation with industry. [NEL08]
• We recommend that the need of students for inexpensive learning environments, including hardware (e.g. multilingual keyboards) and software, be acknowledged. [NEL09]
• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to promote mobility through multilateral international recognition of credits and commonly agreed degree requirements. [PHON-3]
• Larger coordinated efforts are needed to develop innovative pedagogical resources. [PHON-4]
• Lifelong learning needs to take place. [PHON-5]
• The summer schools and courses organized by ELSNET, and others need to continue. [PHON-7]
• The adaptation of educational technology infrastructure to current innovations imposed by the market or research imperatives. [SLE-07]
• For universities in Central and Eastern Europe it is imperative to strength the links with similar institutions from EU in order to set up new curricula, to retrain the staff and to develop the educational and research infrastructure according to well recognized standards. [SLE-08]

Specific Recommendations 

• It is recommended that work towards the further development of Speech and Language Therapy as a recognised academic discipline should continue. It is important to recognise its multidisciplinary links and to encourage theoretical developments and research in both the art of clinical practice and the science of intervention. [CD1]
• It is recommended that courses in phonetics should be an essential element in SLT education, and that they should incorporate a direct clinical focus. A thorough understanding of speech production is seen as a prerequisite for good practice in SLT. [CD2]
• An expansion of the role of methods and tools of SLE in education and in clinical practice is recommended, even if SLT educators are unfamiliar with SLE and somewhat sceptical about the its importance. Development of deeper knowledge of SLE, and collaboration between SLE and SLT should be considered at Master's degree level. [CD3]
• Collaboration between those working in CAL and in SLT for production of materials is strongly recommened. The use of CAL offers exciting possibilities and is viewed positively overall, but its exploitation in SLT education needs care and selectivity. [CD4]
• It is recommended that the use of the internet for education in various areas of SLT should be facilitated for the benefit of clinicians, students and teachers. The need for observance of professional ethics must be emphasised. [CD5]
• It is recommended that teaching and learning strategies that facilitate the application of theory to therapy should be developed and exploited, and that the development of the professional skills that lead to the generation of reflective practitioners should be facilitated. Incorporating pre-clinical subjects (anatomy, physiology, linguistics, phonetics etc) in the new pedagogical methods used in SLT education would have major advantages for student therapists. [CD6]
• It is recommended that closer collaboration between SLT educators, pre-clinical and clinical educators should be encouraged in order to provide good cases or problems for students' learning. [CD7]
• It is recommended that academic and clinical teachers in SLT should have access to continuous training oppor-tunities aimed at helping them to meet the challenges posed by the introduction of new pedagogical methods. [CD8]
• It is recommended that the use of Internet as a part of study programmes in SLT (as in Recommendations 4 and 5 above) is implemented initially on an experimental level, with its effectiveness to be fully evaluated over time. [CD9]
• It is recommended that exploitation of the Internet/WWW should be used to facilitate the application of theory to practice, and to help bridge the gap between research and clinical teaching in SLT. [CD10]
• It is recommended that a standard approach to the use of IPA phonetic conventions for transcribing normal and disordered speech should be adopted across Europe and that this should be a core component of educational courses. Further consideration might be given to the definition of minimum standards in phonetics which could be recognised across Europe for all students of S&LT. [CD11]
• It is recommended that further work should be done at a European level to evaluate educational and professional standards in SLT and to facilitate good practice in education. This may be done through activities such as development and sharing of curricular resources or the development of an advisory network including representative professional bodies and educationalists in SLT. [CD12]
• CPLOL advocates a variety of clinical placements in the basic education of SLTs. In line with Socrates objectives, we would advocate student and staff exchanges between a variety of academic institutions, facilitating the development of equality of standards in SLT across Europe. [CD13]
• There is a need for new researchers in CL. [CL-1]
• The capacity for CL education needs to be increased. [CL-2]
• CL must not forget that theory is also important, and the balance between theory and practice needs always to be there. [CL-7]
• General linguistics and language studies should start integrating CL modules into their curricula. [CL-9]
• CL and speech processing need to cooperate in building links to industry. [CL-10]
• The CL community may be interested in establishing international degrees in CL in its own right. If this happens, then certification and accreditation will be important, as it has been for the Master's in Language and Speech in which ESCA and EACL are involved. [CL-15]
• Internationally funded RTD programmes should continue to support projects for the development of advanced teaching tools for CL. [CL-16]
• Future research projects in CL should be explicitly required to make their results available for educational reuse. [CL-17]
• At the level of the institution, group work and project-based education should become more prevalent in CL and CAL tools should be made available to their students. [CL-18]
• Institutions for higher education should consider open and distance learning schemes and life-long learning in CL. [CL-20]
• An increase of highly competent teaching staff at institutions offering CL is needed. [CL-21]
• We recommend that reforms in CL education not be limited to the level of higher education. It is necessary to initiate wide preparatory measures at other levels of education. Awareness raising and competence raising measures in secondary education can for instance take the form of job orientation with respect to the language industries and the integration of NLP tools in grammar teaching and foreign language teaching. [CL-22]
• We recommend that traineeship (internship) should be part of NEL students' curricula. [NEL06]
• We recommend international funding schemes for creating NEL teaching and learning materials, such as handbooks, CD-ROMs, Web materials, ODL broadcast, multifunctional model and practice corpora, etc., in close cooperation between the EU and non-European countries, ensuring that all prospective users of the products are considered. [NEL10]
• We recommend awareness actions to make students and prospective students aware of the offers in NEL (in particular new job profiles) including computer applications in NEL. Those awareness actions could be carried out through Web dissemination, associations, contacts with the media, local student advisers, etc. The target groups to be informed are both secondary school and university students. [NEL13]
• There is a need for new researchers in PHON for basic research in speech sciences and for applications in the field of speech technology and speech therapy. [PHON-1]
• The capacity for education in Phonetics and in the total field of Speech Communication Sciences needs to be increased. [PHON-2]
• The introduction and the extension of updated curriculum on SLE education in universities to develop strategic needs accross multilingual Europe. [SLE-01]
• To improve and to strength the links between industry (research and development laboratories) and universities in the area of SLE. [SLE-02]
• The definition of a coherent system for acquisition of competencies and skills through dedicated training models addressed to various job profiles and to expected changes in the SLE market. [SLE-03]
• The creation of an European infrastructure for testing, evaluation, certification, quality assessment and dissemination of training resources in the area of SLE in order to increase the quality of collaboration among different institutions over Europe. [SLE-04]
• The definition of a system for the accreditation of SLE courses and a validation procedure for that. [SLE-05]
• More phonetics and computational linguistics in technical university education could better prepare students for the professional jobs in SLE. [SLE-13]
• The contents of curricula in SLE should be in consensus with the multidisciplinarity of this field. It is stratified into different approaching levels. A selection of tutorials modules are recommended together ith software resources available in relation to curricular requirements and educational criteria. [SLE-14]

Recommendations to Institutional Target Group

Based on the work done by the Socrates TNP on Language and Speech during the years 1997-2000, the JEWELS project has made a number of recommendations. These are classified under the headings of:

• General Recommendations
• Specific Recommendations

Bojan Petek, 18th October 2000.